Author, philologist and mythopoet JRR Tolkien was born on January 3rd, 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province, part of South Africa) to Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857–1896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel, née Suffield (1870–1904)…

If you think it strange to devote an entire article to someone as small and insignificant in the Legendarium as Samwise Gamgee, then you have bought into Sam’s own view of himself, as nothing but a simple gardener from The Shire.

But many have suggested that Sam, rather than Aragorn or Frodo, is the main hero of The Lord of the Rings; and this view was promulgated by no less an authority than JRR Tolkien himself…

Oxford, England’s Eagle and Child pub, famed as a meeting place of the Inklings literary society in the 1930s and ’40s, will soon see major renovations, according to St John’s College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford.

I have fulfilled a lifelong dream, and acquired my very own (digital) copy of the complete Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Ed. Of course, the very first word I looked up was “hobbit,” which is famously included in this edition. I hereby reproduce the pertinent parts of the entry…

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, Oxford University professor, and author of the globally beloved fantasy epics The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was born eleventy-seven years ago today, on January 3rd, 1892, in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, a British colony and a province of the Union of South Africa.

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